Help for English Students

New Year, New You: Part 1

Students of HSC 2011. You’ve already tackled one of the modules and probably completed at least one internal assessment. Not really happy with your result? I’m here with good news: don’t panic, it’s not too late to start transforming yourself into a top band English student.

How did you spend the Summer break? Did you read voraciously? Did you compose fifteen practice “belonging” essays under exam conditions using Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall as a related text? No? Not to worry, as I said, it’s not too late.

So what can you do now?

Step One: Read

Does that mean rush out, buy Wolf Hall and spend a week immersed in Tudor England? No. Wolf Hall is a great book but it’s over 600 pages long. Put it on the list to read after your exams are over. At this stage reading for English needs to fall into one of four categories:

a. Core text. Before you complete any assessment task you should have read/viewed your core text at least three times.

b. Additional readings. Your English teacher will probably give you a booklet or a brick of additional or suggested readings for each Module. Or, he or she may take the History teacher approach and throw sheafs of paper at you each lesson. Don’t let those hours at the photocopier go to waste, take the time to read the articles. Many of them will not only give you new perspectives and helpful contextual information but also show you good essay structure.

c. Related material (familiar). One good approach, when choosing related material for the Area of Study and Module C is to choose a text you already know well. Try to avoid texts you’ve studied in previous years, too many schools do the same texts and many set English novels from the junior years of high school are too simplistic for the HSC. However, if you have a favourite novel or film that you’ve read or viewed multiple times, try approaching it with new eyes. If you can make a list of techniques and how they convey a sense of belonging (or not belonging, or history and memory, or conflicting perspectives) then chances are it will work for you. Writing about a text you already like can also lead into exploring Belonging through textual engagement. I’m going to write about that more in a later post.

d. Related material (new). Any new related material–and by new I mean a text you have never read or viewed before–needs to be short. Good choices include: newspaper articles, speeches or monologues from plays (especially Shakespeare – great for techniques), short stories, essays (magazines The BRW and The Monthly are good places to look), graphic novels, advertisements (check out the ones that air during the Superbowl each year, they usually have a solid narrative, clear message and easy to spot film techniques) and websites. This list is not exhaustive, it’s just a little inspiration for students who don’t know where to start.